Extrinsic motivation

Extrinsic motivation is "the motivation to engage in activity primarily in order to meet some goals external to the work itself, such as attaining an expected reward, winning a competition, or meeting some requirement; it is marked by a focus on external reward, external recognition, and external direction of one's work" (Amabile and Collins, 1999: 299-300). Amabile identified two types of extrinsic motivators: synergistic, "which provide information or enable the person to better complete the task and which can act in concert with the intrinsic motives" (ibid, 304), and nonsynergistic, "which lead the person to feel controlled and are incompatible with intrinsic motives" (ibid).